Pant-like absorbent garments, such as adult incontinence wear, infant and children's diapers, swim wear and training pants, typically have adhesive or mechanical fasteners on the sides for donning and removal, or else rely on a stretchable waist opening and leg openings to slide on and off the wearer. Absorbent garments that slide on and off a wearer can be messy after use. Furthermore, in order to remove such absorbent garments, the wearer's clothing covering the absorbent garments, such as pants, must generally be completely removed. Checking the status of the wearer's absorbent garment contents can be just as cumbersome as changing the absorbent garment.
Refastenable seams including mechanical fasteners, such as, for example, hook and loop fasteners, have been found to be particularly beneficial when used in conjunction with pant-like absorbent garments. Refastenable seams allow for the garment to be easily applied and removed, as well as periodically opened to check for exudates and closed if no exudates are found. Absorbent garments having elastic side panels or other non-refastenable side panels can have the side panels tucked into the center of the product for packaging purposes. Absorbent garments having refastenable side seams, on the other hand, can be prone to poor fastener performance if the side panels are tucked into the product in such a way as to cause creasing of a resilient fastening component.
When the refastenable side seam includes a resilient fastening component such as a hook component, these creases can deaden the hooks, thereby reducing the engageable area. As a result, a creased fastener tends to possess lower peel and/or shear values than uncreased fasteners. Products with severe and/or multiple fastener creases tend to be most apt to pop open during application and wear. Fastener creases appear to be more of an issue for hook components than for loop components due to the possibility of permanent deformation of hook material compared to the relative flexibility of loop material. A major cause of these performance-impairing creases is believed to be attributable to the orientation of the panel bearing the resilient fastening component after tucking of the panel and during product compression for packaging.
There is a need or desire for a tucked fastener in a pant-like, absorbent garment having pre-fastened, refastenable side seams, positioned such that the tucked fastener does not interfere with fastener performance.